The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has said that Peter Obi’s presidential ambition is a “divine mandate” that cannot be truncated by anyone.
IPOB’s spokesman, Emma Powerful said this while tackling those linking the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate with the recent attack on a US convoy in Anambra State.
He said it was lame to associate Obi with the attack because he hails from the state, wondering if Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and President Muhammadu Buhari were being linked to insecurity in Adamawa and Katsina states respectively.
Powerful explained that the attempt to link Obi with the attack is to demonise him, saying the same was being done to IPOB by the security agencies.
“It is important to note that those accusing IPOB of being behind the attack on the US Embassy convoy are the real masterminders,” the group’s spokesman said.
He said that those behind the attack have also killed many innocent youths in the South East under the guise that they were IPOB members.
“Their quest to blackmail IPOB globally has led them into assassinating innocent people in Biafra Land. For instance, these government agents assassinated Gulak in Owerri, and they assassinated an army couple in an undisclosed location in Biafra.
“They assassinated Dr. Akunyili in Anambra (late Dora Akunyili’s husband). In all these and many more of the state-sponsored murder cases, IPOB was accused, and to date, police never investigated any of them,” Powerful said.
He disclosed that IPOB’s intelligence unit saved former British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Catriona Laing from being killed when she proposed visiting the country in 2022.
“If not for the Intel from IPOB M-Branch on the plans to assassinate ex-British High Commissioner, Catriona Laing, in 2022 and the warning from IPOB leadership for her not to visit South East, they would have assassinated her too.
“This recent attack on the US Embassy convoy is likely another state-sponsored attack to discredit the peaceful IPOB movement and to make South East more unsafe for investors to continue coming to Biafra to invest. Again, they are late because our call for investors has already started yielding fruit,” Powerful said.
The IPOB spokesman added, “Those linking Peter Obi to these attacks on US Embassy Convoy are the ones that fingers are pointing to regarding the crisis happening in the South East region.
“There is no way they can link innocent Peter Obi to it because he is from Anambra State. Does that mean that all the attacks happening in Adamawa State and Katsina State were caused by Atiku Abubakar and the Buhari in Aso Rock, respectively?
“No matter how ESN security work is, it can never be deemed good or right by the Nigerian government and its security agents. What is the justification to link Peter Obi to the criminalities going on in the Southeast?
“Can it also be said that all the banditry and terrorism happening in Northern Nigeria is masterminded by their criminal politicians whose evidence shows that they aid and abet terrorists?
“We are aware that several terrorist and bandit groups in the North are sponsored by the unscrupulous elements around them there. We should be asking, why are they mentioning Peter Obi?
“Is it because he summoned up the courage to contest their selection process called an election and won by a landslide? They are now robbing him of the mandate given to him by the people of Nigeria because he is an Igbo man.
“They are busy exposing their cluelessness in desperation to demonize IPOB. America has one of the most sophisticated intelligence in the world and can not be deceived by Alamajiris in the government at Abuja. We expect the US government to carry out an independent investigation into the attack.”